No More I Love You's
by John Bigboote
Summary: Dooby dooby doo doo doo, ah-oh.


"_There's a power that comes from deep inside of you, 'cause every day you're reaching toward the light. And you know there's a long, long way ahead of you. But when your wheels get you there, things will turn out right."_

**\- Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors theme song**

_"When it comes crashing down and it hurts inside, you gotta take a stand, it don't help to hide. If you hurt my friends, then you hurt my pride. I gotta be a man. I can't let it slide."_

**\- Rick Derringer and Cyndi Lauper**

"_Good and bad, it's still my past! I think I'd like to have it back!"_

"_Oh, you would? Seems to me you didn't do so well with it the last time around."_

**\- Viper**

"_Excuse me while I whip this out."_

**\- Blazing Saddles**

"_I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him, and together you and I can rule the galaxy."_

**\- Anakin Skywalker**

"_Moosa booga cheeka booka, ho ho ho."_

**\- Jabba the Hutt**

"_I guess sometimes it's just one of those uteruses out kinda days."_

**\- on my blog talking about this show**

* * *

"Hey Ristarte, let me see your Eject button."

Ristarte answered the Demon Lord's request by grumbling and positioning herself toward him so her slim waist was in his view without putting up a fight. Her shoulders slouched as she rolled her eyes in defeat.

"Bon appétit," she sarcastically muttered.

Well, it was fun for the thirteen weeks it lasted. Here we go again.

The Demon Lord lashed his tongue straight across the room toward his divine visitor. Ristarte squeezed her eyes shut and gnashed her teeth in a wince as the barbed end of the appendage stabbed through the front of her silk garment a little below where her belt covered her belly button. He was quick to wrap his tongue around the faint source of life signals tucked inside of her body and pulled it back out without a hassle, having grown accustomed to the positioning of Ristarte's internal features and how the tiny child rode on her pelvis. It wasn't like before, when he had to act harsh, ferocious, desperate, and dig around in there for a while.

The Demon Lord's tongue snapped back quickly as it extended and bought his new meal straight to his slimy lips. If that tiny early life was moving, making a sound, or doing anything but sleeping helplessly completely unaware of its cruel fate, it was too wrapped up in demon's tongue for Ristarte to see it. She couldn't even see what he was holding once he'd tugged it out of her belly in one fell scoop.

That was the baby she and Seiya made while they were sightseeing on some mountains on Gaeabrande. Poor thing. She hadn't even gotten a chance to name it.

The Demon Lord carelessly snapped his mouth shut, crunched with his jaw, and swallowed. What could have been a little bundle of joy was now munched up into a little clump of tomato paste digesting in a frog's gullet.

Regardless of how crafty the Demon Lord became with his secret ultimate skill, there was still the whole fact he had just had his 50-foot-long retractable tongue slathering all over Ristarte's internal tinkerings and ripping apart at least one of them to get at some sweet posterity. The quick but awful event was so stressful on the small goddess that it always caused her spirit data to glitch out for a few seconds. She'd blink back into being Princess Tiana reenacting the last moments of her own terrible demise a century ago. Standing on weak quivering legs in front of the Demon Lord's throne just after the final battle had ended and the baby had been devoured in front of its mother's eyes in the horrific final attack. Shiny brown hair sticking to her face with sweat and splotches of blood. Streaks of tears and blood streaming down her eyes. Waves of blood pouring down her legs and pooling around her slippers. Painfully gasping Seiya's name over and over again as if she had failed him. Whimpering how much it hurt. Clenching her hands across the front of her dress where the biggest and darkest bloodstain was growing. Struggling to keep the little torn up parts she still had left from spilling out of her abdomen and flopping down her royal skirt. Just all around looking like a less-snobby more-white-mage version of Keira Metz from The Witcher 3, and it wasn't one of Keira's good endings.

Her soul stabilized itself and she turned back into her reincarnated form as Ristarte. Most of her physical pain was gone in an instant. She quickly healed the slit across her waist with her stronger divine magic before it got too messy, leaving only a new emotional trauma lingering on her mind in lieu of physical trauma.

It was an awful thing for Ristarte to endure, but the Demon Lord had even worse things on his mind if he ever got his hands on Aria. Ristarte knew what he had in store for her older sister-goddess because the Demon Lord himself sometimes chortled about it. He was the type of king who'd like to gloat about the womb he'd already conquered more than expanding his horizons outward, however. Ristarte begrudgingly did her part to keep him satisfied. She'd rather be his slave fetching him tasty little pastries then let anyone else she cared about become his prisoner and be subjected to his torture. Her humble single womb was restricted to being a vitamin dispenser and a dessert container so no other wombs had to become a science experiment, a butcher's block, or a doomsday weapon.

In his own twisted little way, he almost saw her as an equal. Maybe that's why he agreed to only take the meals she prepared for him and brought him, while sparing all the other poor defenseless bellies he could have bugged.

Despite the troubling conundrum she currently found herself in, Ristarte spent most of her time living with the other gods and goddesses in the Divine Realm. She followed Seiya from world to world as a healing helper and recorded his adventures as always. It went without saying, she and Seiya interacted with each other the same way they always typically interacted. She just had to make a side trip to Ixphoria every few months to drop off some groceries. She insisted on going by herself every time.

The Demon Lord was pretty consistent about how often he wanted his small feasts. Nothing Ristarte conceived ever stayed in her long enough to grow a bump on her belly. Because of her demand-and-supply arrangement with the Ixphoria Demon Lord, she was almost always in an early state of pregnancy as she traveled with Seiya, and there was never a moment where she** didn't** feel like a walking food storage unit. Each of her children got to grow inside the warm and luxurious confines of a mother goddess for a few months before having all of their nurturing safety abruptly ripped away so they could be devoured before they ever got a chance to live.

The conversation she had with Ishtar back when the Goddess of Healing and the Demon Lord were first hashing out their "beneficial acquaintance" was short but irritating.

"_Oh my. You're really agreeing to…?"_ the grandmotherly Ishtar had asked with a great deal of worry in her voice. She couldn't even bring herself to put it in words.

"_Yeah,"_ Ristarte had groaned back.

"_And you'll continue doing this…?"_

"_Yeah,"_ she had groaned again.

"_But… but, my precious dear Ristarte. That's simply horrible! Why would you keep putting yourself through something like that?"_

"_Because it's __**my**__ planet that __**I**__ screwed over and it keeps that big ugly guy on a leash until we figure out something better!" _Ristarte had stubbornly blurted in response. _"You hired Prometheus. He's got birds eating his liver all the time!"_

She had to go through a similar argument with Seiya before he reluctantly agreed to help her. If she was the chef and her belly was the oven, then he was the ingredients supplier. Every time they made love, they were both fully aware of where all their efforts would be going. Besides, the products of their forbidden union between mortal and divine probably wouldn't be allowed to stay on the Divine Realm's radar for very long.

It didn't matter how many helpless little morsels the Demon Lord took from her now. He'd gotten all the vileness and sheer depravity he was ever going to get out of her back when she was the unsuspecting Princess Tiana and he stole her very first baby for his lunch. It was back when she was innocent, back when she didn't even know what she would be risking coming to help in the final battle with Seiya's child curled inside her vulnerable belly, as if all the fairy tales about monsters eating little kids weren't enough to clue her off. Back when she was stupid.

Killing Colt, Aria, and Seiya that day a hundred years ago was nothing. The karma points he earned from the sheer atrocity of devouring Tiana's unborn child straight from the womb where it slumbered and using the loving and virtuous mother as a blood sacrifice was so astoundingly negative that the single act alone allowed him to turn Ixphoria from a thriving Class B paradise to a barren Class SS wasteland. The princess had been the primary source of doom for her own world.

These new children Ristarte brought him were the equivalent of after dinner mints. A terrible tragedy that happened to her over and over again on an infinite loop, but harmless in the overall cosmic balance of the universe. Once he had tasted the fruit of her womb that one fateful, spontaneous time, it was a done deal. As long as he didn't start putting other unwitting mothers on the menu and he didn't get a chance to initiate Operation Oozy Aria, Ixphoria's situation wasn't going to get any worse.

The frog-like Demon Lord licked the last of his meal off his lips. He tilted his bulbous green head toward the delivery girl curiously.

"Your food tastes a little different this time. More tangy than the last few meals. Different guy?"

"No. It's Seiya's again," Ristarte said in a sigh. She was lightly rubbing her fingers on her fully healed stomach. Answering the question made her blush slightly even as she was trying to deal with some post-partum gloom.

"He's the only one I really like."

"Hmm. Well, the recipe isn't bad. Just a little different," the demon mused. "Maybe he reset to a new form recently. Small changes to the father's gene can alter the flavor of the finished product."

Ristarte remained silent about the matter.

"You can anticipate my next order in about the same time from now," the Demon Lord said while waving three of his arms in a casual gesture. "I do quite enjoy these special healing items you brew for me. I knew I was tasting the fruit of a goddess even back when you were still mortal."

Ristarte kept her head down in silence as she came to terms with her feelings. Looking up slightly, she muttered toward him.

"You know we're gonna beat you some day."

"I'd like to see you try," the Demon Lord flicked his sticky tongue, sitting back comfortably as he patted two of his hands against his full gut. "But I suppose if I'm ever going to fall to anyone's party, it would have to be yours. I have no one but you to thank for giving me all this power. It would only be proper if you were the one who took it away."

His demonic red eyes gazed down toward her angelic violet irises as he lowered his voice.

"We made each other, if you'll let me say. You provided me with that sudden, brutal, and innocent sacrifice I needed at that moment long ago so I could turn into the being I am now. But I also taught you how you can be a sacred vessel who carries the power to change entire worlds."

"You don't need to keep reminding me about it," Ristarte grumbled with her head hanging low. Her hair hid the twisted and increasingly angry look on her face.

* * *

_Author's note: Don't ask me. The last thing I remember is bouncing off the side of a bus._

_Author's other note: Eat iiiit. Just eat iiiiiiit. Don't you make me repeat it._

_Author's other note 2: I think I accidentally turned Rista into Roland Emmerich's insane alternate reality version of Queen Elizabeth from the Anonymous movie. You should watch Kyle Kallgren's review of that movie if you ever get a chance. It's great._

_Author's intriguing observation: If Kermit doesn't start being more cautious (there's that word again), he miiiiiight end up in an Ai Rowun "The enemy of my enemy's kid who I underestimated and wrote off as a weakling is my enemy who will destroy me" type of situation._

_Author's side thought: Wait a minute. Is the name of the world supposed to be spelled "Exfolia" as a cruel way to foreshadow how he, like, exfoliates the baby from her body before it has a chance to live?_


End file.
